Facelift Makes You Look 12 Years Younger

New Study Helps Set Expectations for Recovery and Results after Facelift Surgery.

Patients who have undergone a facelift rate themselves as looking an average of 12 years younger after surgery, according to a study in the February issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

After a "significant" recovery period, the vast majority of patients undergoing facelift surgery are satisfied with their results, according to the study by Eric Swanson, MD, an ASPS Member Surgeon in private practice in Leawood, Kansas. "These findings support the recommendation of surgical facial rejuvenation to patients who wish to look younger," Dr. Swanson writes.

For Most Patients, Facelift Improves Appearance and Quality of Life:
Dr. Swanson performed a detailed analysis of the outcomes in 122 patients who had a facelift between 2002 and 2007. The patients were 82 women and 11 men, average age 57 years. The patients were interviewed an average of seven months after their operation. Most had other cosmetic plastic surgery procedures, such as forehead lift and/or eyelid surgery, at the same time as their facelift.

The patients were highly satisfied with their results. The "average subjective reduction in apparent age" was 11.9 years, with a range of 0 to 27½ years. Ninety-seven percent of patients said the results met their expectations. Forty percent rated the results even better than expected.

Nearly 90 percent of patients said they had received positive reactions from other people regarding their new appearance, while only seven percent reported negative reactions. More than 80 percent of patients reported improved self-esteem, and 70 percent reported improved quality of life.

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The facelift that made me fall in love with life again

Annabel Giles was one of Britain's top models, but nearing 50, illness and heartbreak had left her looking tired and old...

The wonderful Joan Collins famously once said: ‘The problem with beauty is that it’s like being born rich, and getting poorer.’

One morning in the summer of 2007, I looked at myself in the mirror and suddenly knew with searing clarity what she meant.

I hated what I saw staring back at me. In my youth, I had been one of the most celebrated models of my generation — a supermodel before the term had been invented. To take up Joan’s analogy, I hadn’t just been born rich; I’d been born a millionaire.

Now here I was, peering at my 48-year-old self in the mirror, wondering where my lovely face had gone.

It seemed as if it was slowly sliding off my head. I looked cross, tired and worried, even when I was feeling chipper. Put simply, my inside wasn’t matching my outside — a feeling most women no longer in the first flush of youth will recognise only too well.

I realised in that moment that I didn’t want to stand idly by as my looks slipped away. I wanted to look as good as I could, no matter what my age.

So there was only one thing for it — to go under the surgeon’s knife.

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The hot-wax mask loved by celebrities 'that wipes years off your face'

It is billed as the quickest way to a 'non-surgical facelift'.

So it's no wonder beauty experts are waxing lyrical about it.

The paraffin wax facial, a thermal mask painted on to the skin and then kept warm under infra-red light, is the latest A-list craze in the quest for more youthful skin.

The treatment begins with an hour's intensive massage by Emma Hardie, the renowned celebrity facialist who came up with the idea.

During the massage, which is known as the Natural Sculpt and Lift facial, she uses moisturising oils and massage to stimulate the skin cells and a 'deep-tissue' kneading technique to give softer, plumper skin.

She then uses a specially formulated rose and geranium thermal paraffin wax mask which is painted on to the skin while warm and left on for half an hour.

This helps the skin to absorb the moisturising oils and soothes and relaxes the facial muscles to help release tension and leave the skin bright and glowing.

The wax is kept warm under an infra-red light so that it doesn't solidify before it is wiped off.

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Is having cosmetic work done the new normal?

As more ordinary women opt to undergo cosmetic work, Justine Picardie argues they are losing more than just a few wrinkles in their quest for ageless perfection.

Earlier this month I found myself sitting next to Courtney Love during Paris Fashion Week. At 47, she looked astonishingly smooth of complexion - her skin unwrinkled, her cheeks and lips as plump as a Renaissance cherub. But beneath her dewy foundation, there were faint signs of yellow bruises, as if this fresh face had blossomed out of a fight.

It's never easy to untangle hard facts from candy-floss gossip in the reporting of celebrity cosmetic procedures; but several newspapers have commented approvingly on Love's new look, and attributed it to Dr Sam Rizk, a New York surgeon who performs a 'stem-cell facelift', whereby the patient's own fat and adult stem cells are extracted, separated and then injected back into the face. This is, apparently, the latest breakthrough in the quest for youthfulness - with more desirable results than the obvious facelifts of the past, which gave everyone the same scarily tautened skin and identikit noses.


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The 'one-stitch facelift' claims to be the ultimate quick fix for turkey necks, but does it work?

Given the wind-tunnel results of plastic surgery as seen on the likes of Joan Rivers, not to mention the prospect of a general anaesthetic, scars and months of recovery, it’s not surprising that a full-on facelift is about as popular as last year’s It-bag.

After all, if you want to pretend your ever-youthful looks are down to yoga and water, it doesn’t do to be seen to look as if you’ve had serious work.

For a while it seemed as if fillers and Botox would be the secret of stealth rejuvenation, but not everyone wants the chipmunk cheeks and glassy forehead that so often go with them.

So the facelift has been fighting back. But this time it’s different.

The new ‘One-Stitch Facelift’ is a minimally invasive, super-sneaky way to lift cheeks and jowls, reduce double chins and tighten saggy necks. It is done under local anaesthetic and involves having just one stitch on each side of the head, buried in the hair.

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Will the fizzy facelift make you sparkle?

We test the latest unlikely treatment - carbon dioxide injected into your skin!

The ingredient that puts the pop into fizzy drinks is being touted as the best way to put the sparkle back into lacklustre looks.

Carbon dioxide, the invisible, odourless gas that is part of the air we breathe and creates the bubbles in champagne, not to mention being blamed for heating up the planet, is being injected into the skin as a rejuvenating treatment.

And the fizzy facelift is growing in popularity as one of a new wave of ultra-subtle rejuvenating treatments that make up the 'no trace face', the backlash against the more obvious effects of thick facial fillers and Botox.

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